Cornwall Borough Council passes on state grant

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The Cornall Borough Council said it will pass on a funding offer from the Wolf administration.

The money would have come in a form of a grant, created after the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) collected a $12.6 million penalty from Sunoco Pipeline LLP in February 2018 for permit violations related to the construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline that is traversing Pennsylvania.

The grants are being offered to 85 municipalities along the southern half of the state who have been affected by the pipeline project and would have to be used for local projects that minimize pollution or protect clean water.

At first, Cornwall borough officials thought the grant would be a gift that would benefit the borough.

But when engineering consultant Jeffrey Steckbeck researched the offer he learned that any project that the borough would accomplish with the grant money, such as restoring a stream bank or installing a rain garden, could not be counted as a project to meet DEPs mandate the borough provides evidence that it is reducing stormwater run-off pollution in waterways.

But if Steckbeck Engineering would include a project that was paid for by a Sunoco Pipeline penalty money grant Steckbeck said DEP will not accept it. The council agreed that they would be risking being fined by DEP later if they accept the grant now.

Councilman Gerald Boughter said, "That's the problem with those grants, they always have a catch to them."

The council has set aside $60,000 in its budget for projects that will satisfy the DEP mandate.

In other news:

• Boughter said he has seen no progress in the construction of a basketball court on borough land in the Goosetown area, a project approved by council last year. Borough manager Steve Danz said a pollution-reducing rain garden was included in the design of the project and submitted in the Pollution Reduction application submitted to DEP, but the state is still reviewing the application.

• Council president John Karinch told council that a representative of the County Planning Department, acting as the borough zoning enforcement officer, took a drive around the borough and found 18 violations relating to parking and storage of recreational vehicles, tractor-trailers, and other types of vehicles.

The zoning ordinance prohibits certain types of vehicles from being parked in front of the house or any part of it from extending beyond the front of the house. The Planning Department will begin sending violation notices to any violator observed during a return visit to the borough.

• A borough resident told council about a vacant house in the borough that has peeling paint and missing rain spouting. Karinch told her that there is no ordinance requiring a house to have a blemish-free coat of paint or spouting. She also noted that when she was walking her dog she saw a brick fall from the chimney onto the ground, and that there is a brush pile in the rear yard that harbors vermin. Karinch said the borough can do something about those hazardous conditions and advised her to share the address with Police chief Bruce Harris after the meeting.

• Irene Vantassel of Spring Hill Acres urged council to consider an ordinance banning fireworks in the borough. She said the state legislature made it legal to purchase aerial fireworks so that the state could collect taxes on their sales, but she said she is concerned about the safety risk of the fireworks being used in the forested areas of the borough.

She gave an example of a fireworks event during the past year conducted by professional pyro-technicians that resulted in a ground fire.

"An ember dropped to the ground near the Hershey Gardens causing two acres to burn, and that occurred with the fire company standing by." she said. "Spring Hill Acres has a lot of trees, brush, and mulch."

Although the provisions in the law, approved by the legislature in December 2017, allows for the aerial fireworks to be purchased it does not prevent municipalities from enacting an ordinance to prevent their use.

"I'll tell you what we will do," Karinch told Vantassel, "We will give all the information you gave us to council and discuss it at our next meeting, to see if there is an interest in banning fireworks."

• Council approved a contract with the Breneman Company of Lancaster to make improvements to the hockey rink in the park at Miners Village. The $12,000 contract will include placing patch compound on a few low areas, installing a coat of acrylic resurfacer, and two coats of acrylic color coating.

• Council also approved bids to contract paving work on part of Aspen Lane and chip and seal work on another part, pave parts of Ironmaster Road, and chip and seal parts of Boyd Street.

• Karinch advised that residents who blow grass cuttings onto roadways are violating guidelines established by the MS4 program.

• Council accepted the resignation of former councilman Anthony Fitzgibbons from the Municipal Authority and Pat Tice from the Board of Health. The council then appointed Jonathan Blomeier and part-time police officer Eric Tobiasto to serve on the Authority.